


thought that love was a kind of emptiness

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 07:02:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: Bellamy - Bellamy does what he knows best, she supposes. He stands guard. His post of choice is the window where she left him, although that bottle of hooch never makes a reappearance, and she is grateful for it. As much as she wants to head up there and shake him by the shoulders, ask him for help, ask him to talk her down again, ask him to say something,tell me this isn’t my fault, she doesn’t.Instead, Raven makes lists.





	1. I. Raven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maybe_now](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybe_now/gifts).



> @maybenowforeverlate; condolences, I am your author and this is what I have authed. I hope you like it - I really liked writing it!
> 
> The prompt was "prompt 1: Bellamy admiring Raven In Space. Raven on earth was already incredible, and that was her adapting to a new environment. but the environment she’s from? in her fucking element??? i’m into it and so is Bellamy. competence. kink." Chapter one is Raven being admired and not realising it, chapter two is Bellamy admiring really hard and also being depressed. There is that to warn about, but I hope I have let them heal.

**1\. air**

At this point, she considers herself quick under pressure, so it doesn’t take Raven too long to devise a plan she can follow, for the next few months. 

Three days after reaching the Ark for the long haul, each of the seven members of the skeleton crew deals with the return (or introduction) to space differently. She knows Monty has a panic attack, because the first night they all sleep on the main deck, and her sleeping bag is the closest to his.

(She tries to think up a dozen ways to apologise, while listening to Harper talk him through breathing. _I’m sorry you’re here because of me. I’m sorry I couldn’t find a way to get us anywhere but here. I’m sorry you’re scared and cold and hungry and I don’t know what to do either why does everyone assume I know what to do._

“You’re doing so well, keep going, that’s good, in,” Harper whispers, encouraging and gentle, with only the shuffling of clothes - Harper rubbing his back - to interrupt the mantra, “out, good, good, let’s do it again…” Raven finds herself following along, her apologies locked in her throat; breathe in, breathe out, you’re doing well, you’re alive, and that’s important, are you with me always?)

She knows Harper reacts by taking on more weight on her shoulders: in taking care of Monty, first, but also in checking up on everyone else, in asking her and Bellamy what she can do, as if she’s decided that Raven and Bellamy are now the appointed leaders. 

Monty takes Emori and Echo on a loud, smug tour of the Ark, and sets himself up in the first family quarters he finds on Alpha, because he decides that life owes him this much, and if it won’t provide, he will take. Raven chooses to stay away from him for now, although every now and then throughout the day, she will bump into one Grounder or another, and have to guide them away from doing anything stupid which could lead to their subsequent deaths just because of curiosity. 

Bellamy - Bellamy does what he knows best, she supposes. He stands guard. His post of choice is the window where she left him, although that bottle of hooch never makes a reappearance, and she is grateful for it. As much as she wants to head up there and shake him by the shoulders, ask him for help, ask him to talk her down again, ask him to say something, _tell me this isn’t my fault_ , she doesn’t.

Instead, Raven makes lists. 

\--

The first thing she does is to write up a quick tutorial to living on the Ark without blowing anything up, for Emori and Echo. She gathers everyone on the main deck for this, because the screens are still working and she’s had time for a presentation (there’s a whimsical use of an emoji in there which makes her feel like a try-hard grandma and, while she’s sure that’s going to be Bellamy’s job, it amuses no-one but her). 

“This is important, and you all look like you need a refresher, so I’ve broken it down into categories. The first is the Do Not Touch or Go Here Or We Might Die.” She brings up pictures on the screen, screengrabs from old security feeds. The generators’ room, the oxygen tank room, the water supply room, and the main control room. “Next, and just as a spoiler, we don’t need a bigass ship to be functioning at full capacity for five years for seven, so over the course of the next few months, I will be working to close off and deactivate a few sectors. Before I do that, we’ll scavenge everything we can need from them with the excuse that once they’re closed off, it’s over.” 

The screen changes to a helpful _WHEN I CLOSE OFF THOSE DOORS IT’S OVER FOR YOU BITCHES ;D_. 

(Nobody reacts to the emoji. She thinks she can see a shadow of a smirk on Bellamy’s face, but it’s probably just the shadow of the sorrow beard he’s grown these three days.)

She clicks the next slide, and carries on. “This is the category called Ask Raven About These Rooms. Bonus round for our Grounder guests, not all of these are here because they’re dangerous.” She shrugs, trying to keep the tone light, “It’d be a long five years if I didn’t teach you something.” 

A hand goes up in the back of the group. 

“Monty, yes.”

Monty looks up from the presentation he’s been - probably - skimming ahead on on his solopad. “Why is there one category called Fingers Go Boom, and one called Boom Under Supervision?”

“Because, Monty,” Raven says, patiently, the small knot in her stomach untensing, “We didn’t die. So we might as well try to live a little.” 

\---

It’s an incredibly satisfying thing to cross things off her list. The sensory power of it alone makes her glad to have wasted a page in an unused and very old notebook, just to hear the _skrrrrr_ of pen on paper when she finishes off step one. 

“That was a good idea.” 

She looks up from her notebook to find that Bellamy has lingered in her room, whereas the others have been set free to roam the Ark and memorise the locations they can or cannot enter. 

“I’m full of good ideas,” she says dryly, because somewhere deep down she doesn’t believe it, and somewhere even deeper down, his presence makes her nervous. 

There’s a part of Raven that expects Bellamy to regret ever coming back for her. There’s a part of her that expects him to change his mind, to take back all his open-handed help, and point a finger and find a target for all his sorrow. His sister being down in a bunker, him having no way of knowing what’s happening to her for five years, Clarke dying because she told him the doors had to be closed, Earth burning, and stars burning out across the universe. Everything. 

So it never ceases to amaze her when instead, he chooses not to. 

“Yeah, well, I’ve always known that,” he says, and manages to squeeze an ounce of that old swagger he used back in the days, when they used to knock heads more often than not. “But you’re in your element here, aren’t you? What else can you come up with in that big head of yours?”

There’s no bite to it, and she knows he means no harm, but he reminds her of an undeniable truth: Raven was always more comfortable in the sky than on the ground. Except her sky is now as inhospitable as the ground, and so, the list.

“I want to make this whole place a home,” she answers him, serious and solemn, and shows him her notebook. “Will you help me?”

Bellamy sits down next to her, still looking distant and sleepy, still looking cloudy and slow, but as he looks at her, she can tell that something in him stirs back to wakefulness, and to arms, and to action. 

He takes the notebook, and before taking a look at her plan, he says, “Always.”

\---

“I didn’t mean it when I said that,” he says later, when she’s strapping him into a spacesuit while the other five watch over them. 

“I promise I will keep you completely and absolutely safe,” she swears, and triple-checks every buckle and valve, then checks it again. The truth is that it’s a two-man job, and Bellamy has the elbow-grease that the others lack, and the cool-headedness that the Arkers in the group don’t have. She has never taken a normal out on a spacewalk with her, but she needs him. They all need him for this. 

In the end, he buckles in - metaphorically - and watches her put her suit on with his jaw locked in tension. Not that she’s paying close attention to him or anything. They put the helmets on, she nods at Monty from the other side of the doors, and he opens the shute. 

They don’t get sucked out into space like in a vacuum, but only because of the safety chords. One second of quick plunge, followed by deafening silence, and a blackness that swallows her up and welcomes her home. If she hears Bellamy yell in panic for a split second, she doesn’t make a point to mock him for it. Space is, to most sane people, absolutely fucking terrifying. 

“Jesus,” he says, after a long moment of quiet, his voice crackly over the intercoms. 

She twirls enough to end up facing him, in zero-gravity, and grins. “Yeah. I _know_.” 

She decides to give him three more seconds of stunned awe at the universe, before pulling them both towards the external control panels for the oxygenation rooms, so they can get to work.

\---

“Here,” she hears, before a mug with hot water the colour of mud gets set on the worktable beside her. “Monty found a teabag.” 

She leans over the mug and takes a sniff, and decides, what the hell. At one point or another, she’s sure she actually ended up _eating_ mud, so old Ark tea won’t hurt. 

“How are you handling depressurization?” she asks, after a sip, and the grateful hum that she forces out of her mouth. No tea for her.

“It’s handling me, I think,” Bellamy answers, and stretches himself out on the floor next to her table. She supposes it helps with the unavoidable nausea, but she doesn’t see why he would also need to stretch his arms up over his head, so that his shirt rides up just so, and reveals - “Hey,” he says, and she snaps her eyes up to his face, a flash of panic running through her veins like ice. 

“What?”

“So how long will this whole - “

“It’s going to take me a few weeks before I can be _sure_ that we have all the oxygen flow redirected to our main base for when we close off the rest of the Ark, and even then, I’ll need to run maintenance on it every month to avoid another situation like what got us down in the first place, but don’t worry. You don’t need to come out with me again if you don’t want to.”

He lets out a breath of relief, tension ebbing out of him, and she hides a small smile. “No offense, but I’d rather lick the floor.” 

She lets out a laugh. “You might as well. Dinner’s gonna be late tonight, I hear.”

\---

Bellamy takes over the scavenging the day after his first (and hopefully last) spacewalk, and Raven settles in of the long haul of checking every back and front system, and getting their oxygen supply sorted. 

She doesn’t expect to gain an apprentice halfway through it. 

The first time, it’s Echo and Emori both, hovering somewhat behind her in hopes of finding something new, or learning something new. After teaching them how screws and screwdrivers work, she puts Emori in charge of helping her take down panels, and has Echo organise screws into piles by size so they don’t lose track of them. 

The second time, it’s just Emori who shows up, and Raven finds her small jobs, and talks while she works, because it’s better to be talking to someone than muttering to herself. They work faster, too; one tank per day, and at seventy tanks, that makes the process a lot shorter, too. 

But it’s still slow, tedious work, and it occupies most of Raven’s days for nearly three months. That’s a lot of talking, too, and it turns out that Emori is a fast learner. 

( “She’s starting to sound like you,” Murphy whines over dinner one time, and Raven pins him with a glare. 

“Consider it a form of payback.” Her sharp smile says _Don’t worry, I’m not done._.)

But Echo, she hovers in the background restless, and Raven catches her one day. She’s too tired and her fingers are numb, and her hips are aching, so she has no patience for bullshit. She asks. 

“I’m not the learning type,” Echo admits, frustrated, pointing out to the room with the tanks where she hasn’t stepped foot since the first day. “I’ll mess it up, and -” 

“You want to earn your keep,” Raven concludes, out loud. After a grim nod from Echo, she feels she understands the woman more. After all, was this not what she tried desperately to do for the first week? Is this whole thing not, in a way, just a way of repaying everyone for their consideration in saving her life? 

She knows a little bit how bitter the world tastes when you only live for the reason of keeping others alive, and making yourself useful. 

“Maybe you’re not meant to be my student,” she says, after a while. “Maybe I’m meant to be yours.”

“I have nothing to give - “

“Bullshit.” She waves it off, and says, “I’ve seen you do those stretches every morning. Does that whole thing work?”

“Yes. It strengthens the muscle where it needs strength, and eases away tension and knots.”

“Cool. I’m a walking knot. Teach me.” 

\---

She doesn’t know how to explain what beckons her to the window that morning. The last of the tanks is done, finished overnight, and she has worked herself past the point where she can fall asleep. Alone in the dark, she overlooks the stars, and starts running through the motions Echo has taught her. 

Moving with the brace is a bit more clumsy, but she can feel her healthy leg stretch from the back of her thigh to her heel, and it is exhilarating. She wants to push down, push it further, although Echo would probably kick her ass if she used this technique to cause herself harm, so she keeps to the lessons she’s learnt. 

By the time Earth spins into view, Raven is lying flat on her back, her eyes to the ceiling, blissfully unaware. Her breathing is even, but her mind is alert, so she hearts the footsteps. 

The funny thing is that even though they’ve barely seen each other during the day, she would still know him by his footsteps. 

“Don’t turn the lights on,” she says, before he can. 

“Are you okay? Are you injured?”

“I’m fine,” she says calmly, hands still on her belly. Breathe in, breathe out. 

“Are you sure? You don’t have to pretend like you’re okay if you’re not, Raven, if it’s your leg -”

“I’m fucking _meditating_!” she snaps, and then lets out a laugh. “Ugh, whatever, I don’t - screw it.” She sits up, a bit disgruntled, but very amused by the look of bemused panic on his face. “Echo taught me yoga.” 

“Meditating?”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to help with the whole…” She makes a gesture around her head, because words get scrambled and she can’t describe it well anyway. 

“I thought yoga meant to be a calm thing.” 

“Are you suggesting something?” 

He lets out a small laugh, then clears his throat, hands up in surrender. “No, no, I’m sure that you, too, can be a calm...thing…” 

“Oh, whatever. Help me up,” she demands, impatiently. Her cheeks are burning, and she is embarrassed, but most of all, she doesn’t want him to linger here. If he is still coming to this window every morning to self-flagellate, then Raven will break the cycle today. “Come on, I’m hungry, let’s go find an old tea bag or something.” 

**2\. earth**

Five years will be a long time to spend in one place, and after they’ve rounded up all the supplies they could scavenge, stock has been taken - of the food, especially - and it does not bode well. 

Now none of the seven people want to experience hunger ever again, and they agree that there is no way for them to ration the food tightly for five years, so they will have to instead come up with their own supply. 

Growing and harvesting is easier on the ground then it is here, except that they do find the old Ark greenhouses, and more importantly, the seed storage room. Having enough dirt and soil in which to put it all isn’t an issue, because at this point all that was once the harvesting grounds of the Ark has turned into a barren soil. It’s encouraging it back to life that gets tricky. 

But nobody wants to be stuck eating algae and nutrient bars that taste like shoe soles for years, and they are definitely _not_ going to resort to cannibalism either, so they make do. 

\---

Seven brains are better than one, so the first thing to do is study up. Raven’s expertise is in things she can tinker with, and she’s more used to building something to destroy rather than something to grow life, so she resorts to the books. 

The Ark carries all of mankind’s collected writings in the cloud, which she coaxes back to working within the first few months anyway. Rather than using it to introduce Echo and Emori to Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, she gives everyone each a book on agriculture. 

She lets Bellamy have one about ancient Roman agriculture, and then threatens to rescind the privilege when he won’t stop talking about the land reform. 

Seven brains are better than one, so eventually they come up with a plan, all of them together, like a team.

Of course, when it comes to the tinkering part, it’s down to her and Monty to be the geniuses there. 

\---

“I feel like we’re kids playing with a chemistry set.”

Raven lets one drop of liquid fertilizer fall into a patch of soil, and looks at Monty. “That’s exactly what we are. At least on my side, I wasn’t the weed girl.” 

“I wasn’t the weed girl, either,” Monty points out, and they share a grin. “So this greenhouse of yours… Think it will work?”

“Believe it or not, we are going to have to be patient with this one and see. In the meantime, we will have your algae.”

“Please don’t say that word,” Harper groans from where she lays, spread out on a small cot by the wall, looking green in the face. 

“You literally made him an apron that says ‘make algae not war’, so you don’t get to make demands,” Raven says.

“Oh my god, I just wanted to be a supportive girlfriend,” says Harper, and then dashes quickly to the toilets again. 

“I love you, supportive girlfriend!” shouts Monty at her retreating back, and lets out a happy sigh when his words are met with Harper’s middle finger right before she turns the corner. 

“You guys are gross.” Raven flicks on the greenhouse lights. “And so’s your fucking algae.”

\---

Days, weeks, months pass; they all know this now because there is a calendar - old school, written on an empty wall and kept tabs of by ticks-per-day - they are keeping, for no reason other than to know when they’ve had a birthday, or an anniversary. 

It turns out that the day the first shoots show up is Bellamy’s birthday. The rest of the gang doesn’t know it, but Raven knows - Raven knows a lot of things about Bellamy by now, what with all their talks in the dark by the window and all their talks in the dark down on the ground. She knows when Octavia’s birthday is, when Aurora’s was. So she knows that the timing is beautiful, because for the last few days she has seen Bellamy fold back into himself.

The Earth has stopped burning. She knows there are fires still left, but not as many, not as visible from outer space; it’s mostly ash, black soil that makes it look like a dead planet, a barren planet. 

It probably fills him with agony and existential crises, because it does the same to her as well. After all, Earth was meant to be their second chance, not this. 

So that day, Monty calls everyone over the coms, and they all meet inside the greenhouse, and there it is. 

“What is it?” 

“It’s corn!” Monty says, clapping his hands excitedly. “Raven and I found a frozen sample and decided to use half to see if we could grow it, and here it is! It’ll take a long time before it’s edible or we can do anything about it, but we’ve created life in space. I know it’s corny - “

“Honey, no,” Harper tries to intervene, but it’s too late, because everyone’s groaning. 

“Before you ask,” Raven cuts in, “He didn’t just choose corn so he could make that joke. I chose it, because it’s a- _maize_ -ing.”

“I’m out,” says Murphy, throwing his arms up in the air in surrender, while Monty and Raven share a high-five. “Good job. Can’t wait to eat it, assuming we can.” Then, a second after the doors close behind him, he steps into the greenhouse again, “Also you two shuck.” 

“We really need to change our reading materials,” Bellamy mutters to himself, while everyone else shares a laugh. 

In the middle of the excitement that follows, with Emori and Echo debating what else they can try to cultivate to recreate foods from home, what crops yield the most multifunctional grains, while Monty and Harper listen in rapt attention, Raven sort of manifests herself at Bellamy’s elbow. 

“I sent a few more books to your e-reader,” she says, her eyes focused on the others, her throat kind of tight in a good way. “Happy birthday.” 

She takes one step to rejoin the rest of the group, when his hand is suddenly there, fingers around her elbow, gentle and firm. She hasn’t been touched in a long time, if she can feel a frisson of pure _want_ , desperate want, just from that. “Raven, you…” She turns to look, to see what he might want to say, but she’s floored by the look he gives her. 

_Stop,_ she wants to say, _I didn’t hang up the moon and stars._

She covers his hand with hers, tentative and vulnerable, and suddenly scared. Because as much as she wants him to stop looking at her like that, she wants him to keep doing it even more. Not because he saved her life, or came back for her, not because she wants to wash her hands clean of guilt, but because he is - he means - so much. 

It all threatens to spill out, so she shuts herself up quickly, by darting in and hugging him. Most of the hugs that came before came from him, in moments when she didn’t expect them, or at times when they had to say goodbye, but this one is just simply a hug. The kind where she clings to him and smells his shirt a little bit, subtly. 

“Happy birthday?” she whispers, hesitant. 

His arms wrap around him, just as tight, and he answers into her hair, “It is.” And, his voice lower still, “Thank you.”


	2. II. Bellamy

**3\. fire**

He starts putting together the quilt about two days after the shoot sprouts its first leaf, because it gives him something to do with this hands. More than half the Ark is closed up like a bottle, sealed off from the section that they’re using to save up on oxygen and preserve resources longer. It doesn’t go unnoticed that the section of the Ark they’re living on now belonged to Alpha, the most privileged of all sectors; to poor kids like them, sleeping in big double beds rather than hard bunks is staggering even months into their return. 

Raven has started making some sort of repairs that she’s explained to them over breakfast, something that will make the Ark warmer to live on without destroying their ecosystem. He should remember the technicalities, not because he’s a genius like her (ha!), but because they’ve all quietly appointed him the leader of the pack, but truth be told is that he was distracted. He gets distracted a lot lately, when Raven Reyes starts to speak. 

He has noticed that she stands taller in the recent months, since she fixed the things that represented immediate danger. She’s been walking lighter since that day she declared that she was going to ‘might as well live’, as if she actually _is_ doing that. 

It’s a fascinating thing to watch. 

He watches her like a moth watches a flame, drawn in automatically, because she is bright and she is warm, and all he feels - almost all the time - is numb. It’s not hard to get out of bed anymore, not _as_ hard as it was the first month, with Earth still blazing with fires down below. But it’s hard for him to find comfort in things on the Ark. Most of the time, it’s as if he is floating underwater, the surface of it covered with thick, impenetrable ice; it’s dark and quiet and lonely, with everything warm and light filtering through layers of solidified water. 

The day he runs the scavenger hunt through Factory, and steps foot into his old childhood quarters, he finally floats up enough to scrape the surface, and hit it with his fist. There are a few more milestones along the following months, weeks, days (time melds into one general abstract concept, between the corners of _today_ and _not today_ ); reading a book that he would not have had access to when he was just a janitor, being there the first time they play soccer and bursting into laughter when Emori kicks the ball straight into his stomach and he _feels_ oh god _he feels_ , Raven snapping at him that she’s _fucking meditating_...

Yeah, the sad truth is that when she’s in the room with him, the slew of ice melts away into such a thin surface he could prod it apart. The truth is, Raven makes him warm. 

He has started to notice that he makes her warm, too. 

\---

He starts making the quilt ten days after his birthday, putting together blankets and worn out shirts, cutting them meticulously into squares and stitching by hand. It’s a tribute to his mother - proof that her lessons have stuck with him even seven years later, despite the fact that he hasn’t done any sewing in years. 

The project is time-consuming, and the right amount of meticulous that it makes him feel better. 

He doesn’t admit it to himself yet that he’s not making the quilt for himself. 

Bellamy sleeps in a room that is three times the size of his old quarters, in a bed that is twice softer, and so much emptier, so much more alone. 

He knows where and how the others sleep. He knows Emori and Murphy are sharing quarters further from the rest, close to where the closed-off sectors are. He knows Echo has moved close to the greenhouse, because she likes to see the hint of green in the morning. Monty and Harper, they have the room opposite, because it’s convenient for Monty to be close to his baby project. 

He has seen the mattress on the floor of Raven’s workshop; he’s frowned at her for it, had her shrug and brush it off with a casual “Old habits die hard, what can I say?” He knows how inhospitable her workshop can be. (Not as empty or cold as his room, because Raven is in it, but still.) 

He builds the quilt with squares of fabric cut from his old clothes, found in storage in his quarters, and tries not to mock himself too much for his sentimentality. 

But yes, two weeks into the project, he admits to himself, this isn’t for him. 

\---

He never feels as clumsy as he does when Raven asks him to help her with repairs. 

On the bright side, they don’t take another spacewalk, and she retains the title all for herself now, but he knows she’s considering training someone else to help with that. (He appreciates that she doesn’t ask him to do it again.) 

But sitting next to her in the workshop and pulling things apart and putting them together with Raven feels like an emphasis on how big and graceless he can be. 

“It’s good, isn’t it?” she asks, breaking him out of his thoughts. He looks up at her from the tools he’s been cleaning for her, and she takes it as a hint to explain. “This. Us, putting things together. It feels good.” Her tight-lipped smile betrays nerves, and shyness, and a vulnerability that makes a knot appear in his throat (Raven Reyes deserves to be strong and safe and happy). He counts to two, and there it is: she shrugs it off again, like she’s sheepish about coming to this observation. “I mean, we learned the hard way to pull things apart, rip them apart or blow them up, and here we all are. Gardening, sewing, creating.” 

He reaches out, because how can you judge him for wanting to, and brushes his thumb very gently over her cheek, picking up a stray tear. “Do you want to take a break?” he asks, quietly, giving her the choice. 

She sniffs, lets out a small laugh, and pulls away to wipe her tears away with the back of her hand. “Sorry, it just hits me sometimes. I didn’t expect to find redemption on the _Ark_ of all places.” 

“Raven, no, you haven’t done anything that you need to redeem yourself for,” he hurries to say, shifting closer, concerned. Where is this coming from, and more importantly, how can he protect her from it? 

“Yeah?” She aims that clever gaze of his at him, and he feels caught. “Then wouldn’t the same apply to you?”

There’s a moment of deafening silence. Then Bellamy laughs, because he has nothing else to do faced with this, other than laugh. “Are you kidding me?” he asks, through laughter. He brings his hands up to cup her face, and feels a jolt when he notices how she closes her eyes and leans into it, nuzzles her cheek against his clumsy hand. Holy fuck. Holy fuck, this woman. 

“I’m not saying get over it,” she says, eyes closed still. “I’d never tell you that, but you deserve more too. You don’t deserve to feel this kind of pain, and sadness, and I can’t explain it but I want to help, I want you to feel _good_ , I want -”

He hears her gasp - the soft, fragile thing - a millisecond before his mouth finds hers, and then there’s deafening silence. He waits, it feels like forever and he comes up with an apology, but then Raven claws at him, all desperate and kind of small, pulling him closer. He buries a groan into the kiss, and pulls her in, pulls her right off her chair and into his lap with the sort of grace and elegance he thought he’d lost. 

“Yes, want,” he breathes against her lips, swallowing up her moans, and wrapping his arms around her waist. Raven presses herself against him everywhere, hips and chest and mouth and teeth, and licks into his mouth. 

“I want,” she breathes back, “I want you.” 

He kisses his way down her neck, reverential. _It’s okay, I love you too._

\---

He wakes up warm, Raven’s breath against the back of his neck. They’re in his room now, buried under blankets that he salvaged from rooms that aren’t being used anymore, and lying in the dark with nothing but the stars outside to light the way. 

Somehow, in the light of the stars, she has found her way to him. He wakes up in her arms, bare skin pressed against bare skin, her healthy leg thrown possessively over his, her arm wrapped around his waist. He can tell she’s asleep from the deep breaths she fans across his skin. 

What a tender fool. What a soft, gentle, wonderful thing of wonder Raven is. 

He brings her hand up to kiss her fingers, the reverence still there despite the hours he spent worshipping tonight. She hums behind him and wriggles closer, stirring. He stirs too, and turns to greet her. 

He mapped her body out at leisure once, but he should go over it again, just to be sure. It pays to be accurate.

\---

“I wanna finish the heating system this month,” she says, later, while he’s drawing swirls along the expanse of her back. “I know we don’t have to worry about seasons here, but space is cold and we’ve walked in sunshine, and I figure we will miss it. The warmth.”

Yes, he thinks, kissing the dimple in her lower back. He has missed this kind of warmth. 

“Are you cold?” she asks, after a bit, turning to look down at him. “Is that why you’re making that?” 

He doesn’t need to look to know she’s pointing at the quilt. The tips of his ears burn, caught out. He clears his throat, “Our ancestors used to have a quilt as part of their dowry. Sometimes they used it for courtship.” 

She smiles, looking a little confused. “Yeah, when they were buried deep under snow in the winter. Nobody’s done it in space.”

He takes a breath, and forces the words out, “I was making it for you.” 

Her eyes widen so quickly that he panics, thinks he’s fucked up, too soon - was it too soon? Or maybe she doesn’t really feel - no, of course she feels something similar, they’ve been tangled up together in his room for twenty hours straight now. 

“You’re courting me?” she asks, after a moment of hesitation. 

“I kind of have to,” he says. “Since I love you and all that.” 

She lets out a little laugh, which he thinks is her slightly hysterical laugh, the panicked-to-be-caught-vulnerable laugh. “Wow,” she breathes out. “You love me?” She smiles so widely. “You love - come here, come up here.” 

He kisses her through laughter, his and hers. “So I take it you like me a little too?” 

“You’re alright.”

“I am making you a quilt.” 

“Mmm. I’ve got another idea you can use your hands for right now.” 

**4\. water**

He finds her in the ensuite; what a word for it, too, who even can afford to have an ensuite bathroom? Not Factory kids, not Mecha kids, only communal showers for them, on allotted days only. But now their quarters have an ensuite, so it’s supposedly their ensuite too: shower cabin that they use, waste disposal unit, sink where he shaves, and the tub that has been steadily collecting dust. 

He finds her in the bathroom, kneeling inside the tub, tools scattered everywhere, a wrench held between her teeth. 

“Not the weirdest thing I walked in on.” She grins at him. 

Raven has been working on the bathrooms. Every room that’s being used as someone’s quarters has had a full check-up, a few replaced elements and all, and - last he heard it - even a working tub, somewhere. She has left theirs for last, claiming she’d have more practice by then and it would just go quicker. 

It’s gone so quick that since she started working on their bathroom sink, he’s had time to grow a full beard. (Their sink is functional now, but shaving the beard would make him itchy, and they don’t have any oils to use for moisturising, and Raven has sleepily admitted she likes it three nights ago, her fingers combing through the hairs on his chin. So he’s going with it, because when he was a Guard facial hair was just not allowed, and now - he might as well live a little.) 

He doesn’t expect her to be in the tub, though, but she looks triumphant when she grins at him. 

“I’m almost done.” 

He sits down on the floor and hands her tools as she asks for them, and watches her work. This part, he loves the most. Watching Raven work, her clever fingers moving quickly, her clever mind thinking faster than anyone can keep up. He said it months ago, but he means it now more than ever; what else does she have in that head of hers? 

“This is lush,” he observes, finally, acknowledging the fact that they will have a bath tub. Baths. All that shit. 

“I know, I’m getting you hooked on that high-end Alpha life shit,” she drawls, wrench still between her teeth, and he thinks _damn, I love you._ “Echo said baths help with muscle tension,” she ads, quieter, and it smacks him in the face.

“Of course.” He wishes he’d thought of that, but he’s not the mechanic. And now he fantasises about drawing her baths, and washing her back, and her hair, and now he wants it, he’s impatient, he can take care of her. (You have to take care of Raven in small doses, so she doesn’t reel back and think it’s in her head, so she leans into it and gets greedy, so she learns to ask for more.) “Are you gonna use it tonight?”

“It needs a cleaning,” she mutters, “I left grease stains and crap everywhere.” 

That gives him something to do. He gets up from the floor, presses a kiss to the top of her head (it makes her drop the wrench with a startled _hey_ ) and heads for the door. 

“I’ll get it clean. You get it working, and I’ll draw you a bath.”

\---

“Jesus, your hands,” she murmurs, and it’s not the steam in the room that makes him hot and heady, but the way her eyes burn into him. 

He licks his lips, shifts a little - water levels buoying around them, splashing a little because they overdid it - and digs his thumb into the arch of her foot. Raven groans, lets her head drop back against the edge of the tub, and bares her throat to him. He is most definitely _not_ hard. 

“Hello,” she says, smiling with her eyes closed. “Something’s happy to see me.”

“Have you fucking _seen_ yourself?!”

He stands in the tub while she laughs, proudly ‘happy to see her’, and reaches down to grab her waist. For a moment, she looks up at him from this level, hair wet and sticking to her face and neck, eyes smiling and full of wonder, and he feels a little dizzy. 

“Bellamy?”

He kisses her quickly, then maneuvers himself to sit behind her, and pulls her in until she’s pressed against his chest. And he is pressed against her, _everywhere_.

“Oh,” she breathes out. “Fuck.” 

Probably not a good in water, he thinks, but holds her close, and presses his lips first, then his teeth, to the side of her neck, where it meets her shoulder. She moans, opens up as she can in the cramped space, and he finds her, a different kind of wet, and warm and eager and greedy. All words that he associates with her in his head, in the best of ways. 

“Slow,” he promises, and takes it easy. Has her arching and squirming, more water ending up on the floor; she twists to try and kiss him, and then gives up when he sinks one finger inside her and curls it just so. “Easy,” he says, because he knows that she likes being told, sometimes, what to do. “I love you,” he adds, because he knows that he has to remind her it’s real sometimes.

“What about - “

“Shh, this is good, baby.” He kisses her cheek, and rubs his thumb against her, earns himself another moan. “You’re good, you’re enough.” He doesn’t play fair; that’s what her sob says, seconds before she comes. “You’re always enough.”

\---

Raven’s eyes are closed, shoulders devoid of tension, as he rubs shampoo into her scalp. It smells like nothing but it does the job, and he gets to enjoy the pleasure of spoiling her some more before they sleep. She will try to reciprocate - this is who she is, he hasn’t managed to convince her yet that she doesn’t always have to return each favour - but he plans to have her too sleepy to insist. 

“You meant it?” she asks, breaking the silence that has stretched out for a few minutes now. 

“Yeah.” 

A few more moments of silence, while the cogs in her brain spin. “I thought you’d end up resenting me the most. For being here.”

He freezes, and it must be for a little too long, because she opens her eyes to look at him. “I wouldn’t leave you behind, Raven. I couldn’t - “ He lets out a laugh. “At the end of the day, _that_ was the hardest thing I could think of doing. Coming to get you? Easy. Even living here is easy, compared to that.”

Her hands find his in her hair, covering them, squeezing them like a lifeline. He can tell she doesn’t want to cry because of this, of course she doesn’t. This kind of reaction is why he resolves to tell her, with words, every time he can. 

“Don’t brush it off with a joke,” he asks, quietly, when he sees her bracing to do just that. “I mean it. I promise.” 

She closes her mouth again, and nods, solemnly. 

“I love you too,” she says, and lets him carry on washing her hair. 

It doesn’t dawn on him that it’s the first time she’s said it, because she’s been showing it so well he heard it loud and clear.


End file.
